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Dogtown

1997, Movie, NR, 99 mins

Dogtown: Review

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Documentarian George Hickenlooper's second feature film, this grim slice of small-town life revolves around a failed actor who's mistakenly hailed as a success when he pays a visit to Cuba, his depressed Missouri hometown. Though handsome Philip Van Horn (Trevor St. John) escaped the clutches of his slatternly, clinging mother (Karen Black) and moved to Hollywood, in 13 years he's only been cast in movie bit parts, though he's crossed paths with the likes of Molly Ringwald and Jeff Bridges. That's more than any of his high school classmates have managed. Teenaged hoop star Ezra (Jon Favreau) drives a tow truck, and his best friend, Curtis (Rory Cochrane, star of Hickenlooper's 1996 THE LOW LIFE), scrapes roadkill off the highway for a living. The two of them spend their spare time spewing racist rants and terrorizing anyone who lacks the sense to get out of their way. One-time high school dream girl Dorothy (Mary Stuart Masterson) is dating the brutal Ezra, still lives with her abusive father and is drinking herself into suicidal depression. Uncomfortable perpetuating the misconception that he's made good, Philip realizes that his tenuous aura of celebrity might help him win Dorothy, whom he worshipped from afar when she was a popular cheerleader and he was a high school nonentity. The shadow of Peter Bogdanovich's LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971) hangs heavily over this chronicle of dreams deferred, right down to the crumbling movie theater whose demise spells the death of hope (in PICTURE SHOW, the last feature was RED RIVER; here it's SIXTEEN CANDLES). But like Hickenlooper's LOW LIFE, the film's story is weighed down by casting; though Masterson and Favreau deliver excellent performances, star St. John is so uncharismatic and one-dimensional that he mires the film in a tarpit of gloom. The most notable thing about this freak-show look at small-town losers is that it marked the third and last screen appearance of Harold Russell, the double-amputee who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a wounded WWII veteran in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1948); he plays Sweet William, who appears to be Cuba's lone decent, normal resident. Russell died in 2002. leave a comment
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